As a temple of friendship, it was also dedicated to the life and work of Richard Wagner, who died in 1883 without visiting the building. In the end, Ludwig II lived in the palace for a total of only 172 days.

King Ludwig II of Bavaria lived in Neuschwanstein Castle for a remarkably short time—only 172 days—before his mysterious death in 1886. Although he laid the foundation stone in 1869 and obsessive-compulsively oversaw every detail of its "fairytale" design, the castle was still a construction site for most of his life. He only officially moved into the completed Palas (the royal living quarters) in 1884. Ludwig was a "royal hermit" who used the castle as a private stage to live out his romanticized medieval fantasies, far away from the political frustrations of Munich. His residence there ended abruptly on June 12, 1886, when he was arrested by a government commission that had declared him mentally unfit to rule. He was taken to Castle Berg, where he was found dead in Lake Starnberg just two days later. Ironically, the castle he built for total solitude was opened to paying visitors only seven weeks after his funeral, and in 2026, it remains one of the most visited landmarks in the world, having served more tourists in a single day than it ever served its creator in his entire lifetime.